When Scott Rawlings’s son, Cody, showed him a photograph of a magnificent whitetail in 2019 — supposedly taken near his Chillicothe, Ohio, home — the man never dreamed he’d actually see it. The likelihood was so remote that he barely gave more than a passing thought to the animal with downward-facing tines.
By Scott’s estimation, only a hot doe or extreme hunting pressure could push the deer onto land he was able to hunt.
Toward the end of the year, however, the frustrated bowhunter remembered the photo. He also realized he knew a guy who owned land closer to where the deer had been photographed.
After gaining permission to hunt the property, he set out a trail camera. Four days later, he retrieved a daytime photo of the very deer that had inspired him to knock on his friend’s door.
The rack was missing two-thirds of its longest drop tine, and the matching pig-stickers were gone, but it was still breathtaking.
“I had about a month to get the job done before bow season ended,” Scott said.
Also fueling his sense of urgency was the knowledge that the buck could drop its antlers before the season even ended.
To increase his odds, Scott decided to hunt with a crossbow instead of his compound. There wasn’t much cover around his stand, and he didn’t want the deer to bust him mid-draw.
He collected a lot of photos of the buck throughout January, but he never saw it until Feb. 5, the last day he could hunt.
Soon after he’d settled into his stand that freezing-cold afternoon, 10 does arrived. The 11th deer to take the snowy stage was the giant buck at the top of his wish list.
The rack wound up scoring 184 4/8 inches as a Typical. The missing points would’ve sent it well above the 200-inch mark and into another category.
Lamenting the loss of at least 20 inches of antler, he asked his taxidermist to restore the rack to its original state, using the many trail cam photos as references. The impressive mount, with all points intact, now hangs in Scott’s home.
There’s more to this woes-to-woohoo story, but you’ll have to read about it in Rack magazine.
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